herself, Richard Masters, and the five friars, being found guilty of high treason, were to die; the Bishop of Rochester, Father Abel, Queen Catherine's confessor, and four more, were sentenced for misprision of treason to forfeiture of goods and imprisonment. All other persons implicated whose names did not appear, were declared pardoned at the intercession of Queen Anne.[1]
April 21.The chief offenders suffered at Tyburn on the 21st of April, meeting death calmly, as it appears; receiving a fate most necessary and most deserved,[2] yet claiming from us that partial respect which is due to all persons who will risk their lives in an unselfish cause. For the Nun herself, we may feel even a less qualified regret. Before her death she was permitted to speak a few words to the people, which at the distance of three centuries will not be read without emotion.
'Hither am I come to die,' she said, 'and I have not been the only cause of mine own death, which most justly I have deserved; but also I am the cause of the- ↑ 25 Hen. VIII. cap. 12.
- ↑ In a tract written by a Dr Moryson in defence of the Government, three years later, I find evidence that a distinction was made among the prisoners, and that Dr Bocking was executed with peculiar cruelty. 'Solus in crucem actus est Bockingus,' are Moryson's words, though I feel uncertain of the nature of the punishment which he meant to designate. 'Crucifixion' was unknown to the English law; and an event so peculiar as the 'crucifixion' of a monk would hardly have escaped the notice of the contemporary chroniclers. In a careful diary kept by a London merchant during these years, which is in MS. in the Library of Balliol College, Oxford, the whole party are said to have been hanged.—See, however, Morysini Apomaxis, printed by Berthelet, 1537.
